The importance of knowledge in the internet age

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You already know: you can find any kind of information on the internet. Everything you want to know, everything you want to find out it’s one click away from you. That’s a big advantage. But, over the past years people begin to see that there are also disadvantages and that’s because the information it’s easy but knowledge is difficult.

A good search engine it’s really useful: you can search any question you want and you will receive hundred and thousands of answers. The answers can be what you are looking for, or they can be vague and hard to interpret or incorrect. You need to filter every information you receive from the internet, in order to be sure you have your right answer. Besides that, long before the internet, people were more concerned about reading, discussing between each other, ask for opinions etc.

In the 70’s there was an abundance of information. Today, with the internet we got a super-abundance of information. Let’s look at some numbers:

Let’s look at some numbers:

Right now, when you are reading this, 1.2 billion people are online;

There are about 100 million websites and half of them are active;

Every year, there are about 72 billion searches performed in Google;

The internet contributes with over $2.2 trillion in annual retail sales;

40% of the world population has internet;

5% of the USA population search for information online;

5 million blog posts are published every day

So, you can see, the impact of the internet will only keep increasing, but only the ones who are informed will benefit from it. What’s the bad part? The more the information appears on the internet servers and the easier you can find it online, the less attractive will knowledge appear to be, by comparison.

If you want to be really sure of an answer you have to do more than just seeking information online. It still requires comparing a lot of sources, you need to have critical thinking, sometimes a knowledge of statistics and mathematics, and a careful attention to detail when it comes to understanding texts. What you need to understand is that even if you are online and you can find everything on the internet, knowledge still requires hard work. Sure, technology can help you save valuable time: it surely has made research easier and it will become only more so, but remember: nobody can do the thinking for you, not even the internet.

Think about how many sources of information you can find online: books, videos, news articles, which summarize important events; blogs, which are usually very brief and personal; forums, which only rarely go into depth; and encyclopedia articles and other mere summaries of topics. So, you can find tons of opinions online, but it’s very important to filter every information and think about it, before being sure it’s true.

What do you think, what advantages and disadvantages does the internet has? What do you think it’s worth seeking online?

Please, share your opinion with us. We are on the internet, where every piece of information can be discussed.